Ban Pavilion
Delicate as a petal yet sturdy as the flower it forms, the Ban Pavilion in Beijing, China explores the unique structure of flower petals and how they can be translated into a built environment with anisotropic sheet morphologies.
Ban Pavilion is an installation built for Beijing Design Week 2012. Made from bent polymer sheets forming a self-supporting structure from a multitude of leaves, the installation explored Orproject – the designer’s research on anisotropic sheet morphologies. This resulted in a form that adapts a structural orthogonal orientation with a system of arches, columns, and vaults based on single-curved elements.
Generally, a thin, flat sheet of flexible material tends to be flimsy and easily deformable. To create its stabilized, self-supporting form, each bent transparent polymer sheet is connected through a simple nut-and-bolt node – to which an understanding of its directional structural strength enables the connection of individual uni-directional, almost two-dimensional planes.
Carefully connecting hundreds of bent transparent polymer sheets created a lightweight yet structurally-proven installation that seemingly hovers itself freely into the sky – with only three columns touching the ground, which eventually unfold an open, vaulted space.
The spatial layout of Ban Pavilion evolved around four centers, with each thin PETG sheet CNC-milled and numerically-identified. Aside from describing the position of each sheet in the pavilion, it also defines the relationship with its neighboring panels. This arrangement created a flowing network of seemingly transparent curves that not only unifies individual units into a clearly defined shape but also directs the viewer’s eye to the sky, like a gigantic yet delicate flora hovering over Beijing’s ancient Hutong roofs.
Given its minuscule size, it is expected that Ban Pavilion served as Orproject’s prototype of the structural possibilities of anisotropic systems – but its recorded success can surely be used in future, related projects.
- China
- Orproject
- https://orproject.com/ban/
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